ENTITY · PERSON (ARTIST, SELECTOR, PRODUCER…)
Patra
Well supported
Patra (Dorothy Smith) began as a female dancehall deejay in the late 1980s under the name Lady Patra before her 1990s recordings reached wider international audiences; her single "Worker Man" reached number 53 on the US Hot 100, the R&B chart's Top 20, and number one on the US Dance chart - a rare American chart breakthrough for a Jamaican dancehall artist of that era.
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- Confidence
- Well supported
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Women deejays in dancehall history
One side
Documented presence
The other
Under-representation
Women deejays and singers are in the record from the earliest dancehall onward, and are consistently thinner in the histories than their male contemporaries — fewer interviews, fewer discographies, fewer photographs kept. The gap is in the documentation rather than in the music.
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